By Marcus Leatherdale
Located in Surfside, FL
Marcus Leatherdale (1952 - 2022)
Silver gelatin print with copper leaf mount
1987
Titled: High Priest. From the Demigod series.
Hand signed and dated and bears artist studio stamp verso.
Provenance: Greathouse Gallery (with label & information verso)
Edition: 1 of 10.
Dimensions mage measures 12" x 5", total measurements are 24" x 13"
Marcus Leatherdale was a Canadian portrait photographer.
Marcus Andrew Leatherdale was born on 18 September 1952, in Montreal, Canada, to Jack Leatherdale, a veterinarian, and Grace Leatherdale, a homemaker. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute.
Leatherdale arrived in New York City in 1978, where he attended the School of Visual Arts. started his career in New York City during the early eighties, setting up a studio on Grand Street.
Leatherdale first served as Robert Mapplethorpe office manager for a while and was photographed in the nude by the master, grabbing a rope with his right hand and holding a rabbit in his left.
Thereafter he worked as an assistant curator to Sam Wagstaff. He soon became a darling of the then vibrant club scene and the fashionable media: Interview, Details, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Elle Decor presented his work. Later on he was featured in artsy publications as Artforum, Art News, and Art in America. Leatherdale was the Cecil Beaton of downtown New York,
He photographed a not-yet-famous club kid named Madonna in her ripped jeans and his denim vest. The performance artist Leigh Bowery was majestic in a tinseled mask, a corset and a merkin. Andy Warhol was a Hamlet in a black turtleneck. Susanne Bartsch, the nightlife impressaria, was a towering presence in red leather. He documented the New York City lifestyle, the extraordinary people of Danceteria and Club 57 where he staged his first exhibits in 1980. Leatherdale was an acute observer of the New York City of the nineteen eighties. His models were the unknown but exceptional ones – like Larissa, Claudia Summers or Ruby Zebra – or well known artists – like Madonna, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Winston Tong and Divine, Trisha Brown, Lisa Lyon, Andrée Putman, Kathy Acker and Sydney Biddle Barrows, otherwise known as the Mayflower Madam, Jodie Foster, and fellow photographer John Dugdale. He Married Claudia Summers, theirs was not a traditional marriage, but they were best friends, and he was Canadian, so it made life easier if they wed. His boyfriend for a time was Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photography studio Mr. Leatherdale also managed. He and Mapplethorpe were a striking pair, dressed like twins in leather and denim, their faces as if painted by Caravaggio, and they often photographed each other.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was often hanging out there, playing his bongo drums; so were friends like Cookie Mueller, the doomed, gimlet-eyed author and Details magazine contributor who was for a time Mapplethorpe’s and Ms. Summers’ drug dealer, and Kathy Acker, the performance artist and novelist. For quite a while Leatherdale remained in Mapplethorpe's shadow, but was soon discovered as a creative force in his own right by Christian Michelides, the founder of Molotov Art Gallery in Vienna. Leatherdale flew to Vienna, presented his work there and was acclaimed by public and press.
This international recognition paved his way to museums and permanent collections such as the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the London Museum in London, Ontario, and Austria's Albertina. He was included in the MoMA exhibit New York/New Wave along with Kenny Scharf, William Burroughs, John Crash Matos, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Lawrence Weiner and Stephen Sprouse. Above all, his arresting portraits of New York City celebrities in the series Hidden Identities aroused long-lasting interest amongst curators and collectors.
In 1993, Leatherdale began spending half of each year in India's holy city of Banaras. Based in an ancient house in the centre of the old city, he began photographing the diverse and remarkable people there, from the holy men to celebrities, from royalty to tribals, carefully negotiating his way among some of India's most elusive figures to make his portraits. From the outset, his intention was to pay homage to the timeless spirit of India through a highly specific portrayal of its individuals. His pictures include princesses and boatmen, movie stars and circus performers, and street beggars and bishops, mothers and children in traditional garb. Leatherdale explored how essentially unaffected much of the country was by the passage of time; and it has been remarked upon that this approach is distinctly post-colonial. In 1999, Leatherdale relocated to Chotanagpur (Jharkhand) where he focusing upon the Adivasis. Later Serra da Estrela in the mountains of central Portugal became his second home base.
Leatherdale's matte printing techniques, which adapt nineteenth-century processes and employ half black, half sepia colorations, reinforce the timelessness of his subjects. Tones and matte surfaces effectively differentiate his portraits from the easy slickness of fashion photography.
In 2019, Mr. Leatherdale compiled his work from 80s in a book entitled “Out of the Shadows”, written with Claudia Summers.
During his time in New York City, he dated Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photography studio Leatherdale managed. His partner of two decades, Jorge Serio, died in July 2021
Major exhibitions
1980 Urban Women, Club 57, NYC
1980 Danceteria, NYC
1981 Stilvende, NYC
1982 The Clock Tower, PS1, NYC
1982 544 Natoma Gallery, San Francisco
1982 Eiko And Koma, Stilvende, NYC
1983 Form And Function Gallery, Atlanta
1983 Galerie in der GGK Wien, Vienna, Austria
1983 The Ring, Vienna (organized by Molotov)
1983 London Regional Art Gallery, London, Ontario, Canada
1984 Performance, Greathouse Gallery, NYC
1984 Social Segments, Grey Art Gallery, NYU
1984 Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn
1985 Ritual, Greathouse Gallery, NYC
1985 Artinzer, Munich
1985 Leatherdale/Noguchi, Gallery 291, Atlanta
1985 Paul Cava Gallery, Philadelphia
1986 Poison Ivy, Greathouse Gallery, NYC
1986 Wessel O’Connor Gallery, Rome
1986 Hidden Identities, Michael Todd Gallery, Palladium, NYC
1987 Demigods, Greathouse Gallery, NYC
1987 Collier Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona
1987 Tunnel Gallery, NYC
1988 Claus Runkel Fine Art Ltd., London, UK
1988 Madison Art Center, Madison
1989 Wessel-O’Connor Gallery, NYC
1989 Summer Night Festival, Onikoube, Sendai
1990 Bent Sikkema Fine Art, NYC
1990 Fahey-Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
1990 Faye Gold Gallery, Atlanta
1990 Mayan Theatre, Los Angeles
1991 Runkel Hue-Williams Gallery, London
1991 Galerie Michael Neumann, Düsseldorf
1991 Arthur Rogers Gallery, New Orleans
1992 Arthur Rogers, NYC
1992 Galerie Del Conte, Milwaukee
1993 Galerie Bardamu, NYC
1996 Fayf Gold Gallery, Atlanta
1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Bridgewater/Lustberg, NYC
1998 Rai Krishna Das...
Category
1980s 85 New Wave Art by Medium: Silver Gelatin
